"It has long been a vexed problem with architects and builders, how to make a building completely fire-proof without the enormous expense of iron beams and girders, and even this has sometimes failed to prove a complete protection. In the building of the National State Bank, the architect estimated that it could not be made fire-proof in the ordinary style for less than $6,000, and while hesitating as to the expense and seeking to provide some remedy against the dampness incident to iron beams, Mr. Fowler learned from the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN that Edwin May, of Indianapolis, the well-known architect of our county jail, had taken letters patent on a fire-proof lath for ceilings and inside partition walls, together with a concrete floor for the protection of the upper edge of the joist which by actual test had been demonstrated to be fire-proof. After a critical examination of the invention upon its merits, it was adopted, and the workmen are now engaged in putting it in. Our citizens engaged in, or contemplating building, will be interested in an examination of the work while in progress."

[We copy the above from the Lafayette (Indiana) Courier, and in this connection we make the following extract from a letter just received by us from Mr. May, the inventor:

"You will see by the above notice one result of my advertisement in the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. This is only a mite. I have more than I can do, and I would say to inventors who are not realizing what they expected from their patents, that one illustrated advertisement in the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN will effect more than a notice in all the newspapers in the United States. This is saying a good deal but such is my belief."